WEBVTT - Vampire Clinic, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:14.280 Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.200 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:20.400 and welcome back for Part two of the Vampire Clinic. 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:24.239 We are going to be spending today exploring the second 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:29.680 part of our investigation into the link between medical conditions 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:34.000 and the inspiration of vampire legends and vampire lore. If 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:36.880 you haven't heard part one yet, you should go back 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:38.560 and listen to that first. We lay a lot of 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.479 groundwork there. We explore some interesting conditions in cases that 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:44.080 may or may not apply to varying degrees to the 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:47.680 vampire legend. But we wanted to continue our exploration today, 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:50.360 so let's open the clinic and allow the waiting room 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:53.239 to fill up with potential vampires. All right, let's let's 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.200 get these patients sorted out. Last time, who do we talk? 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:59.960 We talked about rabies, we talked about syphilis, We talk 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.360 talked about porphyria, conditions which we ultimately concluded were not 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.679 a good inspiration for the vampire legend. It was actually 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:09.080 kind of a case of the media running with something 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:12.319 that was actually a pretty tenuous link So so who 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.840 do we have to kick off the episode with today? What? What? 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:17.520 What is our next patient consist of? Well, I think 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:21.160 today we should start with a condition that has extremely 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.959 clear links to folk vampire beliefs, something that's way less 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:27.880 iffy than the conditions we've talked about before, and that 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:31.440 is going to be tuberculosis. So this is going to 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:34.120 be one that may not account for all cases or 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:37.600 for the ultimate origins of vampire beliefs, but it quite 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:41.480 clearly accounts for some of them. There's very good evidence 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:44.120 that at least in some cases, vampire beliefs were linked 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:49.000 to tuberculosis and not just inspired by tuberculosis, like they 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:52.480 saw somebody who had tuberculosis and thought that's a vampire, 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:56.920 but they were consciously associated with the disease, if that 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.840 makes sense. So tuberculosis is, first of all, a bacterial 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:04.400 infection that primarily infects the lungs, and it's spread by 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:07.360 way of airsolized droplets that get dispersed through the air 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:11.519 when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Tuberculosis or t 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.880 B is contagious, but it's known primarily for spreading among 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:19.000 people who are sharing close living conditions. And though TB 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:21.919 usually attacks the lungs, it can also infect other parts 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:24.440 of the body, including everything from the kidneys to the 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:28.240 spine to the brain. The bacterium that causes it is 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:32.760 micro Bacterium tuberculosis. And one of the crucial things is 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:36.880 that not everybody who has TV shows symptoms. There's what's 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:39.920 known as latent TV, in which you are infected with 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:43.480 the bacterium, but symptoms haven't appeared yet. And we mentioned 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:47.359 in the last episode how diseases that have latency periods, 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.160 one of which can be some types of syphilis, infection 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:56.359 um get that can very easily lend itself to supernatural interpretations, right, 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.480 because it becomes even less clear what the link between 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:03.280 you getting the disease and having the symptoms is, right, 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:05.919 it becomes this this hidden force. And so I want 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:08.400 to look at a paper from the American Journal of 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:13.680 Physical Anthropology that documents one specific case showing a link 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:18.400 between tuberculosis and vampire beliefs. And the papers by Paul S. 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:23.720 Sled Zick and Nicholas Belotoni called Bioarchaeological and Biocultural Evidence 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:27.880 for the New England Vampire folk belief from nineteen ninety 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:31.799 four So the modern pop culture vampire is, as we've 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:35.120 been talking about, somewhat different from the eighteenth century euro 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:39.320 American folk belief in vampires. One thing is that eighteenth 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:43.240 century European peasants often thought they could look at an 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:46.680 unearthed corpse and tell whether or not it was a vampire. 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:51.000 So a vampire would have maybe a bloated chest, long fingernails, 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:54.160 and and what looked like fresh blood draining away from 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:56.960 the mouth. And if people exhumed a corpse and they 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:59.920 they found a quote vampire in this state, it was 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.720 assumed that this was because it had it had been 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:06.280 leaving its grave to drain life from the living. Now, 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:09.200 vampires were associated with and blamed for all kinds of 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:12.960 epidemic diseases. Uh, And if people in an area became 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:16.200 sick and started wasting away and dying, it was because 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:19.320 there was a vampire preying on them. And you know, 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:22.080 so when we're thinking about where to locate these these 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.400 sort of folk villager beliefs and vampires, we very often 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:28.840 turned to like eighteenth and nineteenth century Eastern Europe, as 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:31.000 we talked about in the last episode, that was a 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.600 time and place where vampire beliefs were rampant, but they 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:38.120 were also pretty common in nineteenth century New England. You 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:42.719 could go to parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:45.880 in the eighteen hundreds and find people with diseases who 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.919 believed they were being preyed on by vampires. And a 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:52.360 lot of those beliefs are deeply bound up with tuberculosis infection. 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.640 So the author's right quote, following the death of a 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:59.440 family member from consumption and that's another word for tuberculosis, 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.760 other family members began to show signs of tuberculosis infection. 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.520 According to the New England folk belief, the wasting away 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:11.000 of these family members was attributed to the recently deceased 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:14.320 consumptive who returned from the dead as a vampire to 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:18.799 drain the life from the surviving relatives. The apotropaic remedy, 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.400 and that means apotropaic magic. It means like warding off evil, 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:27.279 you know, to repel evil magic. The apotropaic remedy used 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:30.000 to kill the vampire was to exhume the body of 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:34.520 the supposed vampire and if the body was undecomposed, remove 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:38.040 and burn the blood filled heart or the entire body. 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:41.440 So in this case we're looking at an illness that 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:45.839 is um it's basically providing a script for the victim 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:50.200 more so than the the monster itself. Yeah, exactly. I 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:53.640 mean it is an illness that creates conditions for people 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.320 to think I am being preyed on by a vampire, 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.680 or my family members are being preyed on by a vampire, 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:02.240 and we've got to do something. We've got to you know, 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:05.920 Jeff died last week. We're pretty sure it's him. We 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:08.280 got to dig up his corpse and do something about it. 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:11.640 Got to apply the apotropaic remedy, which would mean take 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:13.960 out the heart, check and see if it's full of blood. 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:16.479 If it is, it's obviously because he's a vampire and 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:18.480 he's been drinking my blood, and you've got to burn 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:20.760 the heart. Yeah, maybe just go and burn the heart anyway, 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:23.080 because you've come this far. Well. As we mentioned in 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:25.440 the last episode, it seems that it was very common 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:27.960 to dig up a corpse wondering if the corpse was 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:33.080 a vampire and discover yes, it was a vampire. Yeah. Yeah, 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:34.160 you don't want to be the one to have to 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.159 go back and say, look, Jeff was okay, he was fine. 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:41.560 After we violated his grave and removed his heart. We 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:43.760 just we just stuffed it right back in there. I 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.599 think it's it's basically basically, we reinstalled it. His corps 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.039 is good to go, no harm, no foul. It's a 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:54.480 factory REFERB REFERB corpse. Uh So the paper, this paper, 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:57.400 in particular, it explores the impact of this set of 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:00.799 beliefs I just described on the bio archical logical record, 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:04.440 which means the study of skeletal remains through one fascinating 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:08.400 example in particular, so in November nineteen in the town 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:12.760 of Grizzwald, Connecticut, which I just have to report every 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.080 time I typed when making notes for this episode, I 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:19.360 typed Grizzworld. I'm just unable to type grizz Wald, and 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.760 I don't know why. But in in grizz World, a 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:28.240 privately owned sand and gravel business discovered an abandoned eighteenth 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:32.960 to nineteenth century cemetery was eroding into their work site, right, 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.600 So their quarrying out sand and gravel, and then there's 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:40.040 this old abandoned cemetery just sort of eroding into their workspaces. 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:43.440 That's kind of putting the blame on the cemetery. It's 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.560 just like that like this, this uh, this sacred burial 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.760 ground is really infringing on our business here, when I 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:52.120 think it's more arguably the other way around. Well, I 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:54.080 don't know for sure, but from the way it was 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:57.000 written about, I tend to assume that the people operating 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:02.520 the quarry did not know that they were digging into cemetery. Yeah, 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:07.120 still the ghost don't care well. So the original cemetery, 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:09.640 because it was a roading, could not be salvaged where 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:12.040 it was, so the skeletons had to be removed and 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:16.680 relocated elsewhere. So all in all, the Forgotten Graveyard contained 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:19.280 the skeletal remains of twenty nine people. There were six 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:23.440 adult men, aid adult women in fifteen subadults, and the 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:26.720 researchers were able to determine through land deeds that the 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:29.520 area had been used as a family graveyard since the 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:33.240 middle of the eighteenth century by the Walton family, who 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:37.439 had moved to Grizz World from Rhode Island in sixteen nine. 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:40.640 Hence it was known as the Walton Cemetery. So when 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:42.560 they looked at the skeletons, one of the first things 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.120 they saw is okay, the remains clearly indicated that the 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:48.480 people buried here led lives of hard physical labor. These 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:52.120 were hard working people. One skeleton in particular caught the 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:56.000 attention of the archaeologists, the remains of a fifty to 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:59.320 fifty five year old male in a coffin within a 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:03.080 stone line grave. They were on the lid of the coffin. 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:06.240 There was a pattern of tacks shoved into the lid 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:12.439 that spelled JB. Presumably this was the man's initials and 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.600 the age at which he died. Now inside the coffin, 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:19.480 things got weirder. Instead of the bones lying in the 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:22.240 normal arrangement you would see of a dead body, you know, 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:25.960 like you know, flat with like skull connecting to neck 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:30.320 and everything JB's skull and his fhemera meaning it's you know, 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:34.400 his thigh bones, uh, his femurs. They were on top 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:38.920 of everything else in a skull and crossbones pattern. And 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:42.240 then underneath the ribs in the vertebrae were also scattered 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:46.400 out of their natural positions. Beyond that, there were periostitic 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:50.400 lesions on the left, second, third, and fourth ribs, and 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:52.920 these would be lesions consistent with what could be caused 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:56.400 by pulmonary tuberculosis or at the very least a condition 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:59.120 that people in the nineteenth century probably would have confused 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:04.520 with tuberculosis. Something uh consisting of violent coughing fits powerful 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:07.880 enough to cause lesions on the membrane surrounding the rib bones. 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:11.880 So we have evidence of death by pulmonary tuberculosis or 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:15.000 some other pulmonary disease that would have looked like tuberculosis, 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.079 and the crazy rearrangement of the bones and the coffin. 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.680 So what's going on. At the time of this paper, 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:27.160 there were twelve known historical accounts of vampire belief based 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:31.520 activities in the eighteenth and nineteenth century New England. I've 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.200 included a chart that we can look at, but in 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:37.960 at least eleven of the twelve cases, the cause of 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:42.840 death for the supposed vampire was consumption, meaning tuberculosis. So 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:46.720 there's a clear link between this one particular disease and 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:51.680 vampire attacks. Now, the authors indicated that the New England 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:56.280 vampire myth is strongly based in the physical realities of tuberculosis, 0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:00.160 both in how tuberculosis symptoms appear and and how the 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:04.720 disease is transmitted. So tuberculosis was known as consumption because 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:08.280 it gave the the appearance of a person wasting away, 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:12.640 essentially being slowly drained of life and vitality, while at 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:16.120 the same time remaining conscious and retaining this desire to 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:20.439 survive and the author's right quote. This dichotomy of desire 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:24.040 and wasting away is reflected in the vampire folk belief 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:28.560 the vampire's desire for quote food forces it to feed 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:32.240 off of living relatives who suffer a similar wasting away 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.000 a lot, and in vampire legends you often see a 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:39.720 lot of these kind of intentional ironies and uh and juxtapositions, 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:45.079 you know, the contradictions of like having this otherworldly appetite 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:48.160 while at the same time appearing gaunt or to to 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:50.960 waste away in the body. You Know, this does bring 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:53.440 me back to brown Stoker's Dracula, because I feel like 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.559 this is an aspect of the vampire legend that is 0:11:57.600 --> 0:11:59.520 well represented in that. You know, It's like someone is 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:03.120 wasting way and what is the cause? Clearly something is 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:06.520 coming uh into their room in the night, and is 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.959 the the supernatural cause of this consumption? Right with's it's 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:12.600 there in Dracula when for example, Lucy has to keep 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:16.000 receiving blood transfusions, right, they all these people keep giving 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:18.640 her blood because it's like something is making her anemic 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:20.880 and draining her life away and they don't see what 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:24.280 it is. But anyway, so in these historical accounts of 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:27.640 New England vampires, what generally happens is you've got family 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:31.520 members all living huddled together in close quarters. One member 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:35.520 of the family gets infected with tuberculosis and dies. Then 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:39.480 just before or soon after that family member dies, another 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:43.559 becomes infected with tuberculosis, which is interpreted as the one 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:47.480 who just died draining the second patient's life in order 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.520 to survive. And of course tuberculosis is well known for 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.480 the ease with which it's transmitted between people living in closer, 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:57.120 crowded quarters, which would have been common for farmers in 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:00.559 rural nineteenth century New England. Uh. The author's note also 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:04.080 that there there would be seasonal lulls and nutrition and 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:08.640 constant unsanitary conditions, which would of course just make things worse. Yeah, 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.680 I can only imagine. And the author's right quote. Although 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.800 there is no evidence of tuberculosis in the remaining Walton 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:19.079 Cemetery skeletons, and eighteen o one narrative of Griswold History 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:21.920 indicates that during the twenty five years preceding the account, 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:26.559 consumptions had proved to be mortal to a number. So, okay, 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:29.800 let's say half your family they've got consumption, and you 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:32.360 think it's because the one of you who just died 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:35.360 is a vampire. What do you do to stop it? Well, 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:38.600 you have to go out and kill the vampire. So 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:42.240 in eighteenth and nineteenth century New England, the contemporaneous accounts 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:44.920 indicate you would do this as follows. First you've got 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:47.600 to dig up the body. Then you check and see 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:49.640 is their blood in the heart, And if there's blood 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:51.880 in the heart, you've got to burn the heart. Many 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:53.920 accounts of the time seemed to indicate that when people 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:56.880 dug up bodies for this reason, they just generally found 0:13:56.880 --> 0:13:59.680 the body undecomposed with blood in the heart, so they'd 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.800 find what they were looking for. And the reason dead 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:06.080 bodies often had these appearances is normal, and it's due 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:09.400 to post mortem decomposition. There's a book called Vampires, Burial 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.959 and Death, Folklore and Reality by an author named Barbera 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:15.120 that gets cited a lot on this account about how 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:19.320 people would mistake and naturally uh the natural effects of 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:24.240 post mortem decomposition for stuff that indicated a dead body 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:26.520 was still alive and feeding, like the you know, the 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.960 bloating and the blood running from the mouth and all that, 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:32.840 or that prominent genitalia. Oh yeah, from the from the 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:37.000 rabies case. Right, Okay, So what about JB. Back to 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.640 j B who had his his bones arranged in the 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:42.680 Skull and Crossbones, Well, the evidence indicates that when his 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:46.480 family members dug him up, he was already decomposed. There 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:49.800 was not any soft tissue left on his bones. So 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:52.359 what do you do You think JB is the vampire 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.160 that's draining your family members of life. You dig him up, 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:58.160 there's no soft tissue, there's no heart to burn. So 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.720 the authors have a hypothesis of apparently the alternative to 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.280 burning the heart if there's no heart left is to 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.920 rearrange the bones and to place the skull in an 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:12.400 apotropaic symbol. The skull and crossbones and the author's right quote. 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.760 In support of this hypothesis, we note that decapitation was 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:19.480 a common European method of dispatching a dead vampire, and 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:22.520 that the Celts and the Neolithic Egyptians were known to 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:25.920 separate the head from the body supposedly to prevent the 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:28.480 dead from doing harm. And on top of that, the 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.920 authors provide some documentary evidence in the form of newspaper 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:34.800 articles showing that vampire beliefs were to be found in 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.240 the vicinity of Griswold, Connecticut in the middle of the 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:41.240 nineteenth century. There's a story from an eighteen fifty four 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:44.240 issue of the Norwich Courier about an incident near in 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:48.080 nearby Jewitt City in which consumption had killed a man 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:51.320 named Horace Ray and three of his sons, and then 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:54.080 several of their dead bodies were exhumed and burned in 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:56.480 order to stop them from feeding on other members of 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.240 the living family. So this is a somewhat different kind 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:00.960 of case than the things we looked at in the 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:04.040 last episode. Uh, this is a case where sort of 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:11.160 where the local epidemiology of tuberculosis included beliefs about vampireism. Yeah, 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:13.360 this one really surprised me. I was not I was 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:15.800 not expecting it, partially, I think because when when I 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:18.520 went into it, I really was more focused. I was 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:20.600 thinking about what are the diseases that line up with 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:24.640 the monster. I wasn't thinking about the Uh, the traumatic 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:29.000 scenario of people wasting away uh in a family and 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.720 then looking for what is the supernatural cause of this, 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:34.360 what is the source of the curse? Well, it seems 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:38.640 to be like it's extending the symptoms of the disease 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:42.360 to beyond death. Right, So it combines this idea that 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.920 people who had consumption were wasting away, they needed some 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:48.880 kind of nourishment or they needed some kind of vitality 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:52.040 to come back to them, and they strongly wanted to survive. 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:55.200 They remained lucid, and they like had their will to live. 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:58.440 And it's almost like saying, Okay, even after they die 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:03.320 in they're buried, those coptoms continue like they're still wasting away. 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:06.399 They still need life and they still must return to 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:08.879 get it somehow. I mean, the nefarious thing about this 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:11.800 is that it is a predictive legend, like it is 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:15.840 predicting how the how the the illness will likely spread 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:20.000 within a given family and what will happen to those individuals. Um. 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:23.720 It just has this uh supernatural explanation for what's occurring 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:28.280 and a remedy that is ultimately going to be rather 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:31.920 indifferent to the actual spread of the disease. I think 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:35.480 that that would be the ultimate horror, wouldn't it that 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:39.240 you you dig up the grave, you violate the corpse 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:43.160 of a family member, and then it doesn't stop the illness, 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:46.399 which I guess probably forces one to think, well, what 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:48.320 it must We must have got the wrong grave, we 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.200 didn't get the vampire. There's a second vampire, and maybe 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:56.080 the madness continues UM, as opposed to just realizing, oh, 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:59.879 this line of thinking is UM is incorrect. You know 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.600 one thing I often think about with UM stuff like 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.359 this that's not clearly self limiting, Like the disease is 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:08.400 going to do what it's gonna do either way. It's 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:13.720 not like a an easily placebo effect controlled condition where 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.920 you can you know, you're experiencing pain and maybe doing 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.200 some kind of magic spell or apotropaic remedy might make 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.439 you think you feel better. Right, you still have a 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:26.720 TV infection and thinking that you've fixed it with apotropaic 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:30.400 magic is not going to make the bacteria bacterial infection 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.879 go away, right. Um, So you have to wonder, like, 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:39.080 how did people react to the clear failure of their interventions? Well, yeah, 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:40.640 I mean part of it I think probably goes back 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:43.040 to our episode on Curses, is that either would be 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:46.119 this period where you feel a little better, perhaps due 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:49.679 to the placebo effect, the placebo effect of of of 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:53.400 graveyard desecration, uh, you know, by the placebo effect. Nonetheless, 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:55.879 so I could they could, I could see where that 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:57.560 might make. That may be a factor. It's like, well, 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.000 we killed the vampire and she got a little better, 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.800 but it was really too late. Oh yeah, it had 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.919 already gotten the fangs in it. Yeah. I mean. Fortunately, 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.200 one thing about tuberculosis is also today there are real 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:14.000 treatments for tuberculosis. I mean, you can get courses of antibiotics. 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:16.359 I don't I don't think it's the easiest thing to treat. 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:18.240 I think I've read that you have to get like 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:22.320 long courses of antibiotics to treat tuberculosis today. But there 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:25.119 do exist treatments. So for this one, I think I 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:29.760 keep coming back to Dracula as being a good, um, 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:35.040 a good cinematic literary vampire to consider, as as the 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.920 TV vampire. The way it's causing say Lucy to slowly 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:41.359 waste away over days and they don't know how to 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:43.879 stop it. Yeah, And then I mean, and that was 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:45.639 a very influential work. So I think he's the shades 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.040 of that another vampire fiction, Salem's Lot, comes to mind. 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.119 You know, that's that's definitely one that plays with the 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:54.680 idea of the vampire essentially slipping in in the night 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:58.000 and doing it's uh, it's uh, it's it's um, it's 0:19:58.000 --> 0:19:59.840 work on you. All right, On that note, we're gonna 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:01.760 tell a quick break, and when we come back, we 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:07.840 will diagnose some more blood drinkers. Thank thank Alright, we're back. 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:10.760 The vampire clinic is open, and we're going to see 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:13.919 the next patient apparently presenting with vampirism. And now, the 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:16.520 last case we looked at, it turned out what was 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:20.840 really inspiring this belief in vampirism was tuberculosis. And I 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:24.720 would say in that last case, we've been offering verdicts 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:27.280 on how clear we think the link is between certain 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:31.280 diseases and vampire lore. Clearly there is some link with tuberculosis. 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.919 That's pretty much undisputable. This next one, I think is 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:39.000 more disputable, but it's also very historically interesting. So I 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:41.679 want to look at a paper by Jeffrey S. Hample 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:45.720 and William S. Hample. I assume they're probably related called 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:49.360 Pelagra in the Origin of a myth. Evidence from European 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:52.120 Literature and Folklore from the Journal of the Royal Society 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:56.960 of Medicine from so. The authors write that in eighteenth 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:01.080 and nineteenth century Europe, villagers often mixed edicine and magic, 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:04.560 with many diseases assumed to have supernatural causes, and when 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:08.080 a disease lingered in a village, villagers often assumed that 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:10.960 the first person to come down with the disease was 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:14.560 a vampire. And the vampire legend can be seen as 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:17.440 an early attempt to try to understand contagion. I think 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:19.200 that's been coming through and a lot of what we've 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:22.679 talked about already. It's almost like vamporism is a folk 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:26.119 logic way of trying to understand the mechanics of contagion 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:28.919 and infection. And one of the things, actually the authors 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:31.080 of this paper point out that's kind of interesting, the 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:33.760 term nos ferrato. You know where that comes from, Robert 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:37.800 uh No, not well, so, it was popularized by Bram 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.800 Stoker in the novel Dracula. It most probably comes from 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:45.919 a Romanian word used for like satan or devil, but 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:48.320 maybe kind of a generic term for some sort of 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:51.520 embodied evil, like that's a nos feratu or the nos 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:54.280 ferato will come in. I think it, yeah, I mean, 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:56.680 I think it means something like that, you know, the 0:21:56.680 --> 0:21:59.159 the unwanted one or something like that. But it's a 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:03.359 term that Romanian speaking people would have used for the 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:06.080 devil or for satan. But the authors of the paper 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:09.679 also note a possible, just possible connection to the Greek 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:15.040 word no suffer us, meaning disease carrier counts. I want 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:16.840 to see that show up somewhere, and it could be 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:19.359 a false cognate, but but I like the idea of 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:21.480 that link that, and it certainly makes sense given all 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:24.359 the historical accounts we've been talking about and that, you know, 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:27.480 they mentioned that other diseases have been proposed as the 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:30.760 possible link to as the possible inspiration or genesis of 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:35.399 the vampire legend, rabies, tuberculosis, orthropoietic porphyria, which in the 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:37.439 last episode we talked about how we think is not 0:22:37.600 --> 0:22:41.560 a good explanation actually, but the authors here believe that 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:44.480 that none of the proposed diseases is adequate to explain 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:48.320 widespread belief in vampires in Europe during this period, and 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:52.640